


To Be Alive

by xysabridde



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, lifein1973, whump!bingo, xysabridde
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 10:07:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xysabridde/pseuds/xysabridde
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the whump!bingo prompt 'someone maimed/crippled'. An investigation goes wrong: Sam pays the price.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be Alive

  Christ, he was angry.

 

  Some ill-advised kid, hooked on speed, had been stumbling home from a rave last night and managed to overdose in the middle of the pavement behind some houses. That was the first bad thing to happen, some boy barely having hit puberty losing his life here amongst the undergrowth and dog shit, alone and high and uncared for.

 

  The second bad thing to happen was that a twelve-year-old girl, playing tag with her sister before school, had tripped over and fallen flat onto his body at eight o’clock this morning. Her screams had brought half the neighbourhood out, and her mother had hustled her back inside as a neighbour rang the police, but it was too late; that little girl had seen far too much already, the staring eyes and the pool of sick around his wide-open mouth, enough that she could barely talk to recount her tale to Annie as they sat together in her mum’s kitchen.

 

  And here they were now, the thin blue line. Gene was pacing up and down with all the grace of a caged lion, hands thrust in pockets, eyebrows so tightly pursed the frown line between them went all the way down past his nose. Had he been in a cartoon, he would’ve had thunderclouds gathering around his head, the odd spear of lightning. And, Sam thought grumpily as he examined his reflection in a puddle and flicked a stray lock of hair off his forehead, he would probably have exactly the same. Poor little Marion hadn’t deserved that, not in a million years, and nor had this boy, tarted up to the nines and slumped in his own bodily fluids, a single pill on the concrete beside him. At least Marion got to carry on with her life. Somewhere out there was a mother, a father, waiting for their son to come home. Waiting in vain.

 

  He kicked a fencepost hard enough to hurt his toe, yelping and curling over in agony just as Chris wandered up behind him.

 

  “… Boss? Got an identity on the boy… you alright?”

 

  “Yeah… yeah, go on,” Sam hissed out through gritted teeth, cradling his poor foot. Bloody hell, that stung. Maybe Annie would have some arnica to put on it. He knew there was no medical proof, but Ruth had always used it on him as a kid, and it always seemed to work. Then again, maybe that was purely psychological, just an effect of his mother’s making-

 

  “’Is name’s Bryan Henshaw. Runaway. Mum an’ dad reported ‘im two weeks ago, said ‘e was a druggie, they’d found speed in ‘is coat pockets. D’you want me an’ Ray to go an’ break the bad news?”

 

  “No. I’ll get Annie an’ we’ll do it, once she’s done takin’ Marion’s statement.” Well, less taking Marion’s statement, more comforting her, really. Poor thing. Nobody, let alone a twelve-year-old, deserved to trip over someone’s corpse like that.

 

  “Lots of ‘ome-made cakes an’ a warm blanket in front of the telly,” he said to himself.

 

  “I’d love it, sir, but wouldn’t someone ‘ave to come in an’ cover for me?”

 

  “Annie!” He swerved round to the sight of her cheeky smile, shiny brown curls swaying in the light breeze. “Hi.” Reaching out, he gave her hand a quick squeeze, ignoring Ray’s wolf-whistle behind her. “How’s Marion?”

 

  “Shaken. Think ‘er mum’s rung the school an’ told ‘em what’s ‘appened, give Marion lots of TLC an’ she’ll ‘ave got over it soon enough. Kids bounce back, especially sunny little ones like ‘er. Even managed to ‘ave a little joke about ‘er mum’s cookin’.” Annie squeezed his hand back, sidling closer for him to put an arm around her shoulders. “Aren’t we… being a bit…?”

 

  “Obvious? Well, the Guv asked when our wedding was planned for, Chris told me I’d bagged the best bird in the station, an’ Ray would ‘ave to be even thicker than ‘e looked not to ‘ave cottoned on by now. I think we can safely ‘old ‘ands with no fear.”

 

  Annie giggled, sliding her own arm around his waist as they headed down the path together, towards the Cortina. “Speakin’ of the Guv…”

 

  “I’d rather not.”

 

  “Oh, come on. ‘E’s not that bad, is ‘e? Just a bit… down. ‘Oo can blame ‘im, must’ve been a bit of a shock, ‘is wife leavin’.”

 

  Only Annie, Sam thought, only Annie, whose heart was so big it practically squashed her other organs into nothingness, could call Gene bloody Hunt ‘just a bit down’. Then again, it hadn’t seemed _so_ much of a surprise to any of them. Especially Gene himself.

 

  “Anyway. What I was goin’ to say, before I was rudely interrupted-” and there was that grin again, forcing Sam’s own lips into a smile of reply- “was that the Guv’s got the keys to the Cortina, an’ if ‘e’s wandered off, it’ll be a bit tricky for us to go an’ deliver the message to Mr an’ Mrs Henshaw, won’t it?”

 

  “Good point. RAY! You seen the Guv?”

 

  “Over there kickin’ ten types of shit out of a bin,” Ray called back, motioning towards the alleyway behind the houses with a lit fag. As if in answer, a single loud clang rang out, then several clanks and bangs as the bins got the hiding of their lives. Sam rolled his eyes.

 

  “Once ‘e’s finished ‘avin’ his temper tantrum, we’ve got parents to inform?”

 

  “Oh, give ‘im five,” Annie scolded him, grabbing his arm to pull him away. “Better the Guv takes it out on a bin than a suspect, isn’t it? Wasn’t it ‘is brother or something, didn’t you say-”

 

  “Stuart.” He’d pulled the files on Stuart Hunt a while ago; it had been less than pleasant reading. Runaway at the age of fifteen, drug addict, missing, presumed dead. “Alright, where abouts do the parents live? Maybe we could walk. Might clear our ‘eads a bit.”

 

  “It’s not too far this way, I suppose… maybe ten minutes. Give the Guv twenty to cool down an’ radio ‘im to pick us up. ‘E’ll be glad we did it, anyway, you know what ‘e’s like with cryin’ women.”

 

  “Don’t remind me,” Sam sighed, pulling her back into a hug as they started along the path. “That must’ve scarred, I mean, she angled the grater so precisely…”

 

  They fell into a companionable silence, arms around each others’ bodies, walking along in the cool Manchester air as commuters roared past and pedestrians tapped along, kids screeching at the school gates, mothers bidding farewell in little gaggles. A bobby cycled past, ringing his bell at Sam and Annie; someone on the radio said something about an incident near Rusholme, Ray replied to say the Guv was tied up at the moment in Levenshulme, and Phyllis growled something about it not being a bloody CID matter anyway and yelled for any plod anywhere to come in before she castrated the lot of them, at which point three did at once and ended up cancelling each other out in a blast of static.

 

  And then they were outside number thirty-one of the street Annie had led him to, and Sam took a deep, steadying breath as he rang the doorbell, squeezing Annie’s hand as hard as he dared as the door swung open.

 

-0-0-

 

  Five soul-destroying minutes later, and the Henshaws sat together in silence on their sofa, Mrs Henshaw shuddering out of her trance occasionally to glance up at the single picture of Bryan on the mantelpiece, Mr Henshaw staring determinedly at the carpet, as though it held the answers to his son’s death somewhere within its brown woven fibres.

 

  “Did you ever find out where Bryan got the drugs from?” Sam asked softly, placing his hands on his knees as Annie clanged a teaspoon against a mug in the kitchen next door, having decided that as Mrs Henshaw wasn’t crying, tea was required instead. He chanced a quick look at the mantelpiece himself, at Bryan smiling at his sixteenth birthday party, and along to a brown-haired girl beaming into the camera, clutching a piece of paper. Mrs Henshaw followed his gaze.

 

  “No, we never knew, we didn’t find out until he was g-gone… Oh, that’s Lorraine. She’s at university now. Graham didn’t want her to go, said it was silly, going to university to learn how to talk to people, but she’s strong-minded… a bit like Bryan. They didn’t talk much, especially after she left home a year ago.”

 

  “What’s she doing at uni?”

 

  “Psychology. Seemed a bit tricky for a girl like her, never much liked school, but she loves it down in Bristol. Wants to work with young people…” Mrs Henshaw trailed off again, and Sam hastily beckoned Annie in with the tea.

 

  “I’m sure she’ll be wonderful at it.”

 

  “She will,” Mr Henshaw said faintly, accepting a cup of tea with shaking hands. “She’ll be… very upset, when we tell her. I think we might wait a week until her exams are over, and then break the- the news. We’ll arrange the funeral so that she can make it back up here in time…”

 

  “Of course, Mr Henshaw,” Sam said gently, and the man bent over until his head was between his knees and shook with silent sobs, leaning into his wife as her hands came round his body, rubbed his back.

 

-0-0-

 

  “Maybe we won’t do an autopsy. Maybe we’ll just kick seven types of shit out of Bryan instead, show ‘im what it feels like to ‘ave someone cause you pain.”

 

  “Alright.” Annie squeezed his hand, walking along beside him as they headed back towards the crime scene, safe in the knowledge that Bryan had been taken along to the station and Gene was waiting for them in the Cortina, having sent Ray and Chris along with the forensics van so they could get started with the investigation. Hopefully Gene would be too knackered from his committing GBH on the bins to drive like a maniac as usual, but Sam had long since learnt not to hope too much when it came to Gene’s driving.

 

  “I mean… goin’ out an’ doing something you know might get you killed, when you know yer mum an’ dad are sick with worry at ‘ome, an’ yer sister doesn’t know where you are either… aunties an’ uncles, schoolfriends, cousins… why would you want to do that an’ leave them all behind, just for a cheap high?” Didn’t these people realise just how crucial people were? Sam had only come alive when he’d come here, found people he’d cared about. Sweet, dependable Annie; determined, caustic Gene; Chris the loyal puppy, always willing to learn; even Ray, on a good day. Christ, he couldn’t imagine losing all of that. Couldn’t imagine the pain he knew he would cause, even if it was egocentric of him to think so. Annie would simply be devastated, Gene… well, Gene would be Gene until he couldn’t be any more. Chris would mope, putting on a big man act that anyone and everyone would see through; Ray would pretend it didn’t affect him and take his anger out on suspects.

 

  And then there was his mum.

 

  He wondered how his mum was coping, back in 2006. Or maybe it was 2007 now? He had to wonder. Had Windows brought out a new operating system that he’d have had to learn his way around, had there been a general election yet. Had Tony Blair stayed in power? Had the Iraq War done any good yet, how many soldiers had died. Was his mum thinking of him, wherever she was, was she thinking about him as her son, little Sammy, or as a disgrace, a man who had jumped to his death from the building he’d worked so hard to climb his career ladder in, something to be mumbled about in church on Sundays, looked down upon? Did she understand, really? Did she know why he’d done it?

 

  They needed to cross the road here, so he angled his body and accompanied Annie towards the crossing. Ruth had held his hand walking along here once, he couldn’t have been more than five, and he’d been playing with the fallen leaves that had lined the pavement opposite him now as she scolded him about scuffing his shoes and warned him about jumping in puddles. Auntie Heather had been there, cooing at him, the smell of the best days of his childhood all around him as he’d leapt from stepping-stone to stepping-stone in his imaginary game of hopscotch, listening to his mother and aunt laughing and watching the sky turning ominously black until Ruth had scooped him up into her arms-

 

  He stepped forwards, towards where the leaf piles had been. He heard Annie scream, and there was a thud just where his mother’s arm had held him up, before the world went darker than the rainy sky in 1974.

 

-0-0-

 

  Voices, distant. He tried to open his eyes, breathe, and someone pressed something to him that hurt so bloody much he wanted to scream.

 

  Annie’s voice, choked, shocked, and Gene’s arm around her shoulders as she collapsed into him, body shuddering with sobs. He wanted to reach out to her, but nothing would move, nothing would work.

 

  He slept.

 

-0-0-

 

  She was by his bedside, holding his hand, and he could feel her fingers, but not squeeze them. They were warm, beautifully warm. He loved those fingers.

 

  She was crying. Why was she crying? What had happened? Someone had been dead, he’d been angry, and now Annie was crying. Terror all but paralysed him. Ray? Chris? _Gene?_ Please God, not them, not them, not after all he’d done, please God not them-

 

  Someone pressed something on a machine and he was borne away.

 

-0-0-

 

  His hip was broken in three places. That was all he registered as the doctor sat down by his side and gently read out a list of injuries, muscles ripped from the bone, joints dislocated, permanent injuries. In all likelihood, he’d need a cane; walking would be difficult if he attempted it for more than a few minutes. They would need to have their house adapted. A hip replacement might be in order, in a few years’ time; for now, they would see where it got them to simply mend the one he had. He might be lucky, he might end up with little more than pain when walking, but they had to be realistic. Few people survived that kind of impact, never mind without permanent effects.

 

  Gene stood, chain-smoking, at the foot of the bed. He’d barely left the hospital, according to Annie, always hanging around, sleeping on the three chairs outside in the hall. He’d not been there when she’d told him; apparently he hadn’t wanted Sam to know about him staying. Sam privately thought that quite touching, but he didn’t fancy any more broken bones, so he wasn’t about to bring it up.

 

  Annie, of course, had been by his side twenty-four-seven, using Gene as her personal errand boy to fetch food, drink, fresh clothes from their flat. The doctors had assumed Gene was a sibling or cousin at first, until she’d set them right. She’d talked to him, as per Sam’s own instructions, made sure he was comfortable, and upped the pain dosage if she thought it wasn’t high enough; thrown the doctor out and chased him down the corridor with her shouting when he’d warned her Sam might not survive. Sam was a survivor, she’d shrieked at them through the walls as they’d retreated; Sam would wake up, he wouldn’t leave her on her own. Sam always came back.

 

  Oh, if only she knew.

 

  For now, Sam lay, pinned to the lumpy mattress with overly-starched sheets, and watched the doctor skirt past Gene and out, Annie stroking one wrist, Gene still pacing up and down the base of his room like a man possessed.

 

  And then his eyes were too heavy to keep open.

 

-0-0-

 

  Six months of intensive physiotherapy at least gave him back the ability to walk, but Sam knew it would never be the same again. Maybe this was just his karma coming back to bite him: he’d got off scot-free injuries wise, sort of, from one RTA, he’d had to be punished by another at some point.

 

  Entirely his own fault, as well. Maybe if he’d paid more attention in the Tufty Club…

 

  The thought made him smile, as he watched Gene in the driver’s seat of the Cortina, smoking out of the open window, a contemplative look on his face. He’d come along on this stake-out more as the brains than the brawn; he knew how these particular blaggers ticked, knew they fancied themselves better off fencing stolen goods at midnight. They wouldn’t notice the Cortina, artfully parked as she was, right where the latest abandoned motors went and half-covered with a sheet; no chance of it being scrapped, they’d be long gone by sunrise, but as disguises went, it was pretty near perfect.

 

  Clutching his binoculars, he did another sweep of the warehouse. Quiet still, no real activity. Gene threw his fag out onto an old bumper and sighed, tipping his head back against the headrest, exhaling through pursed lips. The divorce proceedings weren’t going well, in spite of Mrs Hunt being caught by several shocked WI members dancing the horizontal tango with one of their husbands, and ever since Sam returning to work, Gene had been doing a lot of the foot-work that his DI would normally be doing, delegating the rest to Chris, who at least got to go home and sleep. Sam’s specially adapted chair, whilst being very comfy, was particularly hard to lift himself out of, and the pain in his hip nine times out of ten persuaded him moving was a bad idea anyway.

 

  “Tired?”

 

  “Honestly? Give me a pillow an’ I’d sleep ‘ere. In fact, sod the bloody pillow, I think I will anyway.” Gene closed his eyes, wriggling a little closer to the side of the car. “Tell me if anything ‘appens.”

 

  “OK. Nighty nighty.”

 

  “Pyjama pyjama,” Gene mumbled, and was asleep. Sam chuckled, lifting his binoculars and doing another sweep, only to come back with another big fat nothing.

 

  Or not. Wait. He narrowed his eyes, zooming in, and that was definitely someone there, someone behind those crates- and someone else opposite, approaching, coming past the Cortina on their way to meet the other bloke and a van, that was a bloody van coming out-

 

  “Gene!” He elbowed his DCI, pointing past him as Gene snorted awake. “No time for a nap, they’re over there, looks like they’re gettin’ ready to move the goods out.”

 

  “Right.” Gene grabbed the radio with one hand and the door handle with the other, pressing to transmit as he squinted out the window. “Ray, Chris, you in position?”

 

  “Yes, Guv,” scratched down the line.

 

  “Right. Give us a moment… yep, they’ve got a vanful, bastards. Right. Off yer arses, lads, thieving scum to catch- _go go go go go!_ ”

 

  And he was out so quickly Sam was practically sucked into the vacuum he left behind, craning to see what was happening as Gene vanished into the gloom and the shouts.

 

  There was a scuffle, someone shouted in pain, Gene and Ray were reading (or shouting, more accurately) people their rights; Chris yelped, and there was a thud, footsteps rapidly approaching the Cortina as a hooded figure burst out of the darkness, bolting towards the entrance to the junkyard as Sam scrabbled around in his footwell for something to-

 

  “OOF!”

 

  On a last-second instinct, Sam grabbed his cane and swung it out in front of the Cortina, just at the right height to catch the blagger full-force with it, gasping as he crumpled to the ground, nursing his belly.

 

  “Got one, Guv!” Sam yelled triumphantly.

 

  Gene jogged up, hair dishevelled and tie askew, and hauled the blagger up, cuffing his arms behind his back with the almost effortless skill of a lifelong copper. “Well done, Tyler. Nice to see brains count for something, eh, Billy?”

 

  And with that, he slapped his hand down on the blagger’s shoulder, steering him back towards the police van as Sam flopped back into his seat, a grin a mile wide on his face.

 

  Yes, it was good to be alive.


End file.
